Month: May 2010

Signed by the Toronto Maple Leafs, Jonas Gustavsson from Sweden could be the next superstar goalie in the NHL.

We’ve followed the guy from Farjestad and he was incredible in his last season in the Swedish league. He was like a freakin’ wall. Its different in the NHL but we will see how he adjust to the North American play. We had a good feeling when Lundqvist went over a couple years ago and we now have that same feeling﻿ now.

Here’s a loo at the new BSG Exclusive figure we’ve got for sale over at Cmdstore.com!

Samuel Anders was a professional athlete before the Cylon destruction of the colonies. Left to fend for themselves, he and a group of other survivors waged war against the Cylon occupation before being rescued by Starbuck and the crew of the Battlestar Galactica. Though his marriage to Starbuck is difficult at times, the pair have overcome the most extreme of obstacles.

That’s the official word from the folks at Diamond Select, the manufacturers behind this awesome new 7-inch figure. Sculpted by Jean St. Jean studios, it features great articulation but a look that also makes it suitable for display on your toy shelf! The fact that it helps bring back fond memories of the now-ended Sci-Fi series just makes it all the sweeter!

Marvel Universe has just released a three figure series based on Iron Man 2. Welcome to the Hall of Armor.

Featuring Iron Man Mark IV, Iron Man Mark VI and War Machine, this exclusive series boasts some beautifully-rendered 3 3/4-inch figures standing atop light-up platforms that cast a brilliant glow on the armour, keeping it looking sharp in Stark Laboratories while Tony and Rhodes take a time-out.

Each base takes 3 AAA batteries, but fear not! The batteries are mercifully included so you needn’t worry about that miserable moment when you take a toy home only discovered it’ll take a trip to the store to finally get to playing.

And while you’re here, if you haven’t managed to catch the flick yet, here’s a review from The Onion AV Club:

The primary challenge for all blockbuster franchises is to be big yet fleet. Iron Man is as good a model as any, thanks largely to Robert Downey Jr.’s flamboyantly narcissistic Tony Stark, plus filmmakers who valued pacing and character as much as superhero hardware. But sequels, in their quest for more and bigger action and colorful new villains, tend to take on weight, and suddenly Streetcar Marlon Brando turns into a marble-mouthed beast with an ice bucket on his head. The exceedingly busy Iron Man 2 comes perilously close to that tipping point—call it the Spider-Man 3 axis—but much like its predecessor, it’s a clean, efficient, somewhat generic piece of storytelling, and most of the additions aren’t subtractions. This passes for success in the summer movie season.

Exalted worldwide as a one-man peacekeeping force, Downey’s preening Stark has become so busy erecting monuments to himself that he hands over Stark Industries to Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) and devotes his energies to Iron Man full time. But he faces serious adversity from within and without: Rogue countries and private competitors like Justin Hammer (Sam Rockwell) have begun testing their own weaponized robot suits, the Armed Services Committee (led by smarmy Senator Garry Shandling) wants to bring Stark under federal control, psychotic Russian physicist Ivan Vanko (Mickey Rourke) looks to carry out a decades-old family vendetta, and the arc reactor in Stark’s chest cavity is slowly killing him. And oh yeah, there’s his mysterious new assistant Natasha (Scarlett Johansson), and Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson), and a bigger role for military buddy Lt. Col. James “Rhodey” Rhodes (Don Cheadle, replacing and upgrading Terrence Howard).

That’s at least two sequels’ worth of incident packed into one, but director Jon Favreau and screenwriter Justin Theroux treat most of the scenes with a light, glancing wit that keeps the bloat at bay. Downey is reliably funny in his runaway egotism, and Rockwell’s Hammer proves the ideal adversary, a creature of equal vanity whose haplessness constantly undermines his raw, nefarious ambitions. The long stretches between action beats would be a problem for other movies of its kind, but as with the first Iron Man, the splashy effects sequences—which ring with the dull clang of metal on metal—are by far the least compelling in the film. The less money on the screen, the better the movie becomes. Is the Dogville set available for Iron Man 3?

All a movie needs is Liam Neeson doing something cool and I am absolutely sold from the word go. The fact that the A-Team’s got that and District 9’s Sharlto Copley mean that I will definitely be catching it when it opens this summer. But for anyone unconvinced that this won’t be a respectful remake rather than a tongue-in-cheek pseudo-homage, here’s an article from Brand X:

Where the original Alpha Unit was a quartet of disgraced Vietnam war vets turned soldiers of fortune, the new squad comprises covert operatives who ran missions during the most recent Iraq war and get hung out to dry for crimes they didn’t commit. They’re determined to clear their names from the moment they make their inevitable break out of maximum security prison.

According to the filmmaker, Joe Carnahan, it’s more in the spirit of Christopher Nolan’s “Batman” reboot than, say, Ben Stiller’s comedy-arrested “Starsky & Hutch.” “I’m not interested in making the easy, breezy Cover Girl version of ‘The A-Team,’” Carnahan said. But, um, isn’t this a summer popcorn film full of sight gags and big explosions? “We streamlined and stripped it down. But we had to keep some staples,” the director clarified.

Although the project had been gestating with various filmmakers — most notably John Singleton — for almost a decade, Carnahan threw out all the previous scripts and redrafted the action to kick off during the impending American troop withdrawal from the Middle East.

“I thought they were too slavishly devoted to the TV show,” Carnahan said of past scripts. “While I like the TV show, I didn’t think it was any great shakes in terms of heavy drama.”

Former Ultimate Fighting Champion champ Quinton “Rampage” Jackson’s portrayal of B.A., Mr. T’s character in the original, is a prime example. Gone are B.A.’s thick coil of gold necklaces and habit of exclaiming “I pity the fool!” In character on-set, however, a resplendently Mohawked Jackson sported temporary tattoos across his knuckles that read “P-I-T-Y” on one hand and “F-O-O-L” on the other.

Likewise, “Howlin’ Mad” Murdock, played by Sharlto Copley, has been updated for the new millennium. “What passed as crazy 25 years ago? It doesn’t hold up,” Carnahan said. “Nowadays, you have Steve-O on ‘Jackass’ strapping on a g-string made out of chicken parts and rappelling over an alligator pit. So you have to reevaluate things like ‘crazy.’”

Copley, who starred in last year’s Oscar-nominated “District 9,” also idolized the team while growing up in South Africa. Still, he held certain reservations about being part of the adaptation.

“At the beginning, I was a bit skeptical to do a movie of a TV show that could come out really dodgy,” Copley said. “But when I heard who they were casting, I thought, ‘This could be really fun!’”

Carnahan glanced out at the principal cast and again defended his remake of the TV classic. “We’re not making an hommage to ‘The A-Team,’” the director said. “We’re taking the base story of four guys wrongfully convicted of a crime, they’re an Alpha Unit, that’s it. That’s the point of departure.”

There’s a new series of toys from the folks at Disney and Pixar, bridging the gap between the hugely successful 2006 film and its upcoming sequel. Of all the Pixar films, it seems that Cars’ Hot Wheels style merchandising has been the most successful. From individual vehicles to playsets and race courses, these items fly off the shelves whenever we get a shipment.

The latest collection is the Cars “Lenticular Eyes” series, featuring eyes that look around and give the figure even more life than the clever, film-loyal designs generally allow.

The characters available in this group include several variations of Lightning McQueen, Hudson Hornet, Lightning Ramon, Sarge, Fillmore, The King, DJ (Chase), Leak Less and more!

They join the growing collection of Disney/Pixar Cars figures we’ve got over at CmdStore. If you’re a fan of the film, be sure to check ’em out!

Meanwhile, in other Cars news, a blind item recently appeared at The Orlando Sentinel which an interesting question.

Just got off the phone with a delightful British character actress who was “running late. I was just doing ADR (voice over) work for Cars 2.”

She’s in a couple of films now making the rounds. And we don’t know exactly what vehicle she’ll play in Pixar’s Cars sequel.

But she strikes me as a Mini Cooper sort of girl. Not Aston Martin or Jaguar or Land Rover.

One of Japan’s most beloved exports, the little guy turns 58 this year, first appearing in a 1952 manga before becoming an international hit when the 1963 television series went global. He was last seen on the big screen in 2009, when the CGI animated feature was released. If you’re a fan of any of his many incarnations, though, this is definitely an item you’ll want on your toy shelf.

EXCELLENT NEWS for Sims fans whose computers might not be up to par when it comes to running the massive game! Here’s the story from PC World:

Surprise, The Sims 3 will soon shed its PC exclusivity by gracing not one, not two, but all three of the major consoles and a handheld to boot. Publisher Electronic Arts just revealed that The Sims 3 (PCW Score: 4.5 out of 5) is in the mixer for the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Wii, and Nintendo DS. It’s been secretly churning for some time too, apparently, since EA says it’ll be available for those four already this fall.

Worried it won’t transition comfortably from keyboard-mouse to couch-and-gamepad? Stay skeptical, but EA claims it “tailored each platform [version] of The Sims 3 with exclusive features to allow for even more control, creativity, and connectivity.” (I know, a little silly with the alliterative sunshine…and we’re not even to the part where they trot out shelf-syntax like “rich,” “immersive,” and “seamlessly integrated.”)

New to the console versions, “Karma Powers” let you fiddle more directly with your Sims’ well-being, and EA says you can employ them to help your Sim “get lucky,” offer them an “instant beauty” makeover, or slap them down with an “epic fail.” It sounds like the powers have flip-sides, too, and EA says using them “may have unexpected results and karma may come back to bite.”

Of the lot, it looks like the Wii and DS versions are the ones to beat. The PS3 and Xbox 360 ports will share the PC version’s option to share custom content with others. They’ll also include an option to automatically annoy–I mean “notify” Facebook friends of your in-game achievements.

But it’s the Wii and DS that have with the coolest-sounding new content.

For instance, the Wii gets a brand new beach town, with “unique residents, traits, careers and lifetime wishes.” You’ll be able to square off with friends in a new “Life Moments” mode (no explanation how it works) to earn rewards. And it sounds like EA’s added exclusive “adventure quests” designed to flesh out each area and break up stretches of needs-juggling monotony.

The DS version, by comparison, gets a “never before seen” feature where players can use the device’s stylus to “build their Sims’ homes with tools, draw walls and floors, and customize virtually everything from décor objects, textures, and more.” The Create-a-Sim aspect’s also reportedly been finessed to play to the DS’s strengths, allowing you to literally sculpt your Sims’ attributes and wardrobe. And while I’m not sure what this next bit means exactly, you can “for the first time ever on the Nintendo DS…enjoy a complete life simulation.” I’ll just read that as “notably less emasculated” overall gameplay than previous handheld ports.

Conspicuously absent from the lineup of supported devices? Sony’s PlayStation Portable, whose monthly unit sales are in the toilet. That’s a shame, considering how well the PSP version of The Sims 2 sold (tepid critical reaction notwithstanding) when it shipped back in December 2005.

If you haven’t gotten your hands on the Sims 3 for PC and are still looking for it, or if you want to be kept up-to-date on the impending release of the console ports, be sure to take a look over at EA Games’ Official Site.

The Montreal Comic Con is definitely a small convention, but it tends to draw big talent and this Sunday, May 9th, should be no exception!

The Guest of Honour is Chris Claremont: Writer Chris Claremont has encountered more success than most writers ever dream of. His stories have achieved best-seller status, won numerous awards, and are trend-setters for the industry. Although best known for his work on Marvel Comic’s X-Men series, he has written other seminal characters such as Batman and Superman; originated several creator-owned series; is published throughout the world in many different languages; authored nine novels; and even had his first video game premier in Spring 2006. His work has touched millions.

Beyond that, this bite-sized, one day convention will be putting the focus on local talent! You can expect something bigger this summer, but it’s always great to see and support the local creators and Montreal is definitely a great place to do that, boasting a surprisingly large number of great artists doing some really impressive, sometimes world-renowned work.